Monday, April 11, 2011

AT&T is leveraging Cotendo's newly announced "Cloudlet" capabilities in its AT&T Content Acceleration suite for the faster delivery of dynamic content, such as social media and shopping cart data.

Specifically, AT&T is teaming with Cotendo to add their Search Engine Optimization and Cloudlet offerings to the AT&T Content Acceleration suite. This will push the business logic of dynamically generated web pages into the content acceleration cloud.

AccuWeather, which provides up to the minute weather reporting, is using the Cloudlet module of the AT&T Content Acceleration service to improve response times without buying and maintaining additional servers. Previously, users with GPS-enabled smartphones were tying up AccuWeather's whole network with very specific requests for weather data. AT&T said that with the addition of the Cloudlet module, requests for updated weather information can now be made within a larger local geographic area, eliminating the need to travel back to headquarters for the latest forecast. As a result, update requests to headquarters have declined by 75 percent, and AccuWeather is now providing near real-time response important to its users.

The Cloudlet module can make decisions on features such as geography, devices, and request routing. By teaming with Cotendo, AT&T is deploying this new Content Acceleration feature which enables new classes of capabilities, and applications to be delivered globally and controlled in real-time.

AT&T Content Acceleration also includes a monitoring service that offers detailed reporting and alerts for most major search engines. This technology helps business to access detailed information on potential troubles, and address them before they occur. The Search Engine Analytics module from Cotendo delivers crucial web site information, so issues that could impact a site's search engine visibility and rankings, and by extension its traffic and profitability can be pinpointed and corrected. Using this module allows the web sites to function with fewer glitches and faster content. Businesses using the AT&T Content Acceleration Search Engine Analytics module experience more clicks and higher conversion rate. As a result, customers have better experiences, which can increase loyalty to the site.

"The ability to deliver localized information that our customers need while not flooding our entire infrastructure was paramount to providing consumers with real-time access to weather-related news and updates," said Jon Porter, engineer and member of AccuWeather enterprise architecture team. "With the Cloudlet module of AT&T Content Acceleration service, our transaction times have improved, without forcing our company to buy and maintain more servers."

"Businesses are seeing an increasing need to deliver richer and more dynamic content to web customers," said Sam Farraj, Assistant Vice President of AT&T Digital Media Solutions. "Simultaneously, their customers are showing little or no tolerance for waiting to see that content delivered. By delivering content quickly and more targeted via the AT&T network, AT&T Content Acceleration is the perfect bridge between a company and its customers," he said.